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Affordability gap continues to rise
26/05/2016

Latest figures on the housing market and house prices published
by the government show that home ownership is becoming increasingly
unaffordable to those on low and median earnings.

The ratio of lower quartile house prices to lower quartile
earnings in England in 2015 rose to 7.02 compared to 6.95 in 2014
and 6.66 in 2013.

Over the same period the ratio of median house prices to median
earnings in England rose from 6.92 in 2013 to 7.49 in 2015.

These figures show that anyone on lower quartile earnings
(bottom 25%) would need to raise just over seven times their annual
earnings to be able to buy a house at the lower end (bottom 25%) of
house prices across England.

The latest figures provide a full breakdown across
individual local authority areas and demonstrate that for some
local authority areas the "affordability gap" is considerably worse
with places outside London like Epping Forest (13.50), Cambridge
(12.47), Oxford (11.28) and Warwick (9.22) having some of the
highest affordability gaps.